ubuntu8.11

[David Fox]

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 8:03 PM, Keith <menziesk at telus.net> wrote:
> Hopefully I will become a newcomer to the world of Linux,namely, Ubuntu 8.11

Welcome!

> Rather than partition my harddrive ( I'm using XP Professional) I would like
> to install a programme called VirtualBox, why I'm not sure.

Virtualbox allows other OSes (guests) to run side by side with your
host OS, which could be either XP or Ubuntu (I'm assuming Virtualbox
is available for Windows, never tried it on Windows) so you don't dual
boot in that situation; rather, you work from a "virtual" hard disk
that is really a file.

To do this well, you have to have ample RAM (2gigs, preferably more)
plus your CPU must be able to support this from hardware.

You can dual boot (but of course only one operating system is running
at any one time) and not have to partition your drive.

It may not be the best (as far as performance) way to do it, but this
is what I ended up doing on my new laptop. Came with Vista, so I kept
it :). But I also simply stuck the Ubuntu CD in the drive, ran the
install program, gave it about 15 megs to work from, and pressed the
Enter key. The installation ran fast, without any further user
intervention. Nothing could be simpler, and I've done quite a few
installs over the years.

What you end up with is a boot loader that lets you select between
Ubuntu and Vista. The first OS is default, so I end up in Vista if I
don't press any keys.